ABSTRACT
Here Jung’s problematic elevation of experience over and above faith rather than through faith is given prominence. So strongly does Jung defend the original experience of God that he severs it from belief and faith altogether. In fact in this regard his religious feeling comes to possess all the blind dogmatism of his father’s own faith. Jung’s understanding of Christianity is entrenched not only in his own self-understanding but also in this ongoing, stubborn oedipal battle with the memory of his father. That his genuine desire to heal his spiritually defeated father and act as physician to an ailing religious tradition are in desperate conflict with his need to separate himself from and essentially surpass his father. In this respect Jung dissociates from his father and to a certain extent becomes his own father whilst Kierkegaard, whose God-image is fused with the memory of his father, stays the eternal son. Jung puts Christianity onto his therapeutic couch and diagnoses its one-sidedness; however, owing to his own rigid dogmatism and distanced stance he takes towards Christianity, the all-important new element of the dialectical therapeutic process is never allowed into consciousness. In this respect Jung is the therapist who himself is not open to change and therefore can affect no change in his patient (in this case Christianity) either.
